The Clown

by Heinrich Böll

  “I was just making the modest attempt of taking a bath,” I said, “is that against my contract?”

  “Your sense of humor can only be of the gallows variety,” he said.

  “Where is the rope,” I said, “is it dangling already?”

  “Cut out the symbolism,” he said, “let’s talk business.”

  “It wasn’t me who started talking about symbols,” I said.

  “Never mind who started talking about what,” he said, “so you seem to have made up your mind to commit artistic suicide.”

  “My dear Mr. Zohnerer,” I said gently, “would you mind very much turning your face away a little from the receiver—I get your beery breath right in my face.”

  He swore under his breath in dialect, and then laughed: “Your impudence evidently hasn’t suffered. What were we talking about?”

  “Art,” I said, “but if you don’t mind I’d rather we talked business.”

  “In that case we wouldn’t have much to talk about,” he said, “now listen, I’m not giving you up. Understand?” I was too surprised to answer.

  “We’ll take you out of circulation for six months and then I’ll build you up again. I hope that slimy bastard in Bochum didn’t upset you seriously?”

  “He did as a matter of fact,” I said, “he cheated me—out of a bottle of cognac and the difference between a first and second-class ticket to Bonn.”

  “You were crazy to let them beat you down over the fee. A contract is a contract—and your quitting was justified because of your accident.”

  “Zohnerer,” I said quietly, “are you really so human or.…”

  “Rubbish,” he said, “I like you. If you haven’t noticed that, you are stupider than I thought, and besides, there is still a financial asset left in you. Why don’t you give up this childish drinking.”

  He was right. Childish was the right word for it. I said: “But it has helped.”

  “In what way?” he asked.

  “In my soul,” I said.

  “Rubbish,” he said, “forget about your soul. We could, of course, sue Mainz for breach of contract and we would probably win—but I wouldn’t advise it. Six months’ break—and I’ll build you up again.”

  “And what am I supposed to live on?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “surely your father will fork out something.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then try and find a nice girl friend who’ll help you out.”

  “I’d rather do the rounds of the villages and small towns,” I said, “on a bike.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said, “in villages and small towns they read newspapers too, and at the moment I couldn’t find a job for you at twenty marks a night in a youth club.”

  “Have you tried?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve been on the phone all day on your account. Not a hope. There’s nothing more depressing for people than a clown they feel sorry for. It’s like a waiter coming up in a wheelchair to bring you your beer. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “What about yourself?” I asked. He was silent, and I said: “I mean, thinking I could have another try in six months’ time.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but it’s your only chance. It would be even better to wait a full year.”

  “A year,” I said, “do you know how long a year is?” “Three hundred and sixty-five days,” he said, inconsiderately turning his face toward me again. His beery breath nauseated me.

  “Supposing I tried under another name,” I said, “with a new nose and different turns. Songs to the guitar and a bit of juggling.”

  “Nothing doing,” he said, “your singing is terrible and your juggling downright amateurish. Forget it. You have the makings of quite a good clown, possibly even a good one, and don’t show up again until you have practiced eight hours a day for at least three months. Then I’ll come and have a look at your new turns—or old ones, but practice, give up this stupid drinking.”

  I said nothing. I could hear him breathing heavily, drawing on his cigarette. “Try and find another faithful soul,” he said, “like the girl who traveled around with you.”

  “Faithful soul,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “forget about the rest. And don’t imagine you can get along without me and clown around in lousy clubs. That’s all right for three weeks, Schnier, you can do a bit of nonsense at fire brigade anniversary dinners and go round with a hat. As soon as I find out about it I’ll cut it right off.”

  “You bastard,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m the best bastard you can find, and if you start going round on your own you’ll be completely washed up in two months at the outside. I know this business. Do you hear?”

  I was silent. “I said, Do you hear?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I like you. Schnier,” he said, “I’ve liked working with you—or I wouldn’t be spending all this money on a phone call.”

  “It’s after six,” I said, “and I’d say it’s costing you about two marks fifty.”

  “Yes,” he said, “maybe three marks, but at the moment no agent would invest that much in you. So: I’ll see you in three months’ time and with at least six first-class turns. Squeeze as much as you can out of your old man. Goodbye now.”

  He actually hung up. I went on holding the receiver, heard the buzzing tone, waited, finally replaced it after a long pause. He had cheated me on a few occasions but he had never lied to me. At a time when I had probably been worth two hundred and fifty marks a night he had got hundred and eighty mark contracts for me—and probably made quite a nice profit out of me. It was only after I had put back the receiver that I realized he was the first person I would have liked to go on talking to on the phone. He ought to give me some other chance—than to wait six months. Perhaps that was a group of artistes who needed someone like me, I was not heavy, I never got dizzy and after some training I could join in a bit of acrobatics quite nicely, or work out some skits with another clown. Marie had always said I need an “opposite number,” then I wouldn’t get so bored with the turns. I was sure Zohnerer hadn’t considered all the angles. I decided to call him up later, went back to the bathroom, took off my bathrobe and threw the rest of my clothes onto the floor, and got into the tub. A hot bath is almost as good as sleep. When we were on the road I had always taken a room with bath, even when we were still short of money. Marie always said my background was responsible for this extravagance, but that’s not so. At home they had been stingy with hot water as they were with everything else. A cold shower, that was something we could have any time, but a hot bath was considered an extravagance at home too, and even Anna, who otherwise often closed one eye, was not to be budged over this. At her I.R. 9 a hot bath had evidently been considered a kind of deadly sin.

  Even in the bathtub I missed Marie. She had sometimes read aloud to me as I lay in the tub, from the bed, once from the Old Testament the whole story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, another time the war of the Maccabees, and now and again from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. Here I was, lying completely deserted in this stupid terra cotta bathtub, the bathroom was done in black tiles, but the tub, soapdish, shower handle and toilet seat were terra cotta. I missed Marie’s voice. Come to think of it, she couldn’t even read the Bible with Züpfner without feeling like a traitor or a whore. She would be bound to think of the hotel in Düsseldorf where she had read aloud to me about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba till I fell asleep in the tub from exhaustion. The green carpeting in the hotel room, Marie’s dark hair, her voice, then she brought me a lighted cigarette, and I kissed her.

  I lay in foam up to my neck and thought about her. She couldn’t do a thing with him or near him without thinking of me. She couldn’t even screw the top on the toothpaste when he was around. How many times we had had breakfast together, skimpy or luxurious, hurried or leisurely, very early in the morning or almost at noon, with plenty of jam or none at all. Th
e idea of her having breakfast with Züpfner every morning at the same time, before he got into his car and drove off to his Catholic office, almost made me religious. I prayed it might never happen: breakfast with Züpfner. I tried to picture Züpfner: his brown hair, fair skin, straight build, a kind of Alcibiades of German Catholicism, only not so mercurial. According to Kinkel his position was “in the center but still somewhat more Right than Left.” This Left-and-Right business was one of their chief topics of conversation. To be honest, I had to add Züpfner to the four people who seemed to me to be authentic Catholics: Pope John, Alec Guinness, Marie, Gregory—and Züpfner. No doubt he too, however much he might be in love, was influenced by the fact that he had saved Marie from a sinful situation and placed her in a sinless one. Obviously his holding hands with Marie hadn’t meant anything serious. I had spoken to Marie about it afterwards, she had blushed, but nicely, and told me, “there were many things involved” in this friendship: that their fathers had both been persecuted by the Nazis, and Catholicism, and “his manner, you know. I am still fond of him.”

  I let out some of the bathwater, lukewarm by this time, ran in some hot, and shook some more of the bath stuff into the water. I thought of my father, who has an interest in this bath stuff factory too. Whether I buy cigarettes, soap, writing paper, popsicles or wieners: my father has an interest. I imagine he even has an interest in the inch of toothpaste I use now and again. But at home no one was allowed to talk about money. When Anna wanted to do the accounts with my mother and show her the books, my mother always said “Money—what a disagreeable topic.” We got very little pocket money. Luckily we had a great many relatives, when the whole bunch got together there were fifty or sixty uncles and aunts, and some of them were nice and gave us a little money from time to time, my mother’s stinginess being proverbial. To cap it all, my mother’s mother was an aristocrat, a Von Hohenbrode, and to this day my father feels like a graciously accepted son-in-law, although his father-in-law was called Tuhler, only his mother-in-law had been a Von Hohenbrode. Germans today are even more infatuated with titles than in 1910. Even people who are considered intelligent will do anything to get to know an aristocrat. One day I ought to draw the attention of Mother’s Executive Committee to this fact. It is a racial matter. Even a sensible man like my grandfather can’t get over the fact that in the summer of 1918 the Schniers were supposed to be raised to the nobility, that the papers were “so to speak” all ready, but then at the critical moment the Kaiser, who was supposed to sign the document, hopped it—he probably had other things on his mind—if he ever had anything on his mind at all. This story of the “near aristocracy” of the Schniers is still told today on every possible occasion, after almost fifty years. “They found the papers on His Majesty’s desk,” my father always says. I am surprised no one went to Doorn and had the thing signed. I would have sent off a messenger on horseback, then at least the matter would have been settled in proper style.

  I thought of how Marie used to unpack the suitcases while I was already in the bath. How she would stand in front of the mirror, take off her gloves, smooth her hair; how she would take the hangers out of the wardrobe, hang up her dresses on them and put the hangers back in the wardrobe; they would squeak on the brass rod. Then the shoes, the faint click of the heels, the shuffling sound of the soles, and the way she set out her tubes, bottles and jars on the glass top of the dressing table; the big jar of cold cream, or the slim bottle of nail polish, the box of powder and the hard metallic sound of the lipstick being stood on end.

  I suddenly realized I had begun to cry in the bathtub, and I made a surprising physical discovery: my tears felt cold. At other times they had always felt hot, and during the past few months I had wept hot tears several times when I was drunk. I also thought of Henrietta, of my father, of Leo who had converted, and was surprised I hadn’t heard from him yet.

  12

  It was in Osnabrück that she told me for the first time that she was afraid of me, when I refused to go to Bonn, and she was determined to go there to breathe “Catholic air.” I didn’t like the expression, I said there were plenty of Catholics in Osnabrück too, but she said I just didn’t understand her and didn’t want to understand her. We had already been in Osnabrück two days, between two bookings, and still had three days ahead of us. It had been raining since early morning, there wasn’t a single film showing that I might have wanted to see, and I hadn’t even bothered to suggest we play parchesi. The day before when we had played, Marie had worn an expression like that of a particularly long-suffering nursemaid.

  Marie was lying on the bed reading, I was standing at the window smoking and looking down on the Hamburgerstrasse, sometimes onto the station square, where people were running in the rain from the station to the waiting streetcar. We couldn’t do “the thing” either. Marie was sick. She had not actually had a miscarriage but something of the sort. I had never found out exactly what it was, and no one had told me. Anyhow she had thought she was pregnant, now she wasn’t any more, she had only spent a few hours in the morning at the hospital. She was pale, tired, and edgy, and I had said it certainly wouldn’t be good for her to make the long train journey now. I would like to have known more about it, whether she had been in pain, but she told me nothing, just cried sometimes, but in a strange irritable way.

  I watched the little boy coming along the street from the left, toward the station square, he was wet through and held his school satchel open in front of him in the pouring rain. He had turned back the cover of the satchel and carried it in front of him with an expression of his face like I’ve seen in pictures of the Three Kings offering the infant Jesus frankincense, gold and myrrh. I could make out the wet book covers, almost coming apart. The boy’s expression reminded me of Henrietta. Dedicated, oblivious, exalted. Marie asked me from the bed: “What are you thinking about?” And I said: “Nothing.” I watched the boy go across the square, slowly, then disappear into the station and I was afraid for him; for this exalted quarter of an hour he would have to do five minutes’ bitter penance: a scolding mother, a worried father, no money in the house for new books. “What are you thinking about,” Marie asked again. I wanted to say “nothing” again, then I thought of the boy and I told her what I was thinking about: how the boy arrived home, in some village close by, and how he would probably lie, because no one could believe what he had actually done. He would say he had slipped and fallen, his satchel had fallen into a puddle, or he had put it down for a few minutes, right under a drainpipe from a roof, and suddenly water had come pouring down, right into the satchel. I told Marie all this in a quiet monotonous voice, and she said, from the bed: “What are you trying to do? Why are you telling me all this nonsense?” “Because that’s what I was thinking about when you asked me.” She didn’t believe any of my story about the boy, and I lost my temper. We had never lied to each other or accused each other of lying. I got so mad I forced her to get up, put on her shoes, and run over to the station with me. I was in such a hurry I forgot the umbrella, we got wet and didn’t see the boy at the station. We went through the waiting room, even to the Traveler’s Aid, and I finally asked the ticket collector at the barrier whether a train had just left. He said, yes, for Bohmte, two minutes ago. I asked him whether a boy had come through the barrier, wet through, with fair hair, about so tall, he became suspicious and asked “What’s the matter? Has he been up to something?” “No,” I said, “I only want to know whether he got on the train.” We were both wet, Marie and I, and he looked at us suspiciously from head to foot. “Are you from the Rhineland?” he asked. It sounded as if he was asking me if I had a police record. “Yes,” I said. “I can only give out information of this kind with the permission of my superiors,” he said. I expect he had had trouble with someone from the Rhineland, probably in the army. I knew a stagehand who had once been swindled by a Berliner in the army, and ever since then treated everybody from Berlin as a personal enemy. During the performance of a female acrobat from Be
rlin he suddenly switched off the light, she lost her footing and broke her leg. The thing was never proved, they said it was a “short circuit,” but I am sure that stagehand only switched off the light because the girl was from Berlin and he had once been swindled in the army by a Berliner. The ticket collector at the barrier in Osnabrück looked at me with an expression that quite scared me. “I have a bet with this lady,” I said, “it’s a bet.” That was a mistake, because it was a lie and anyone can tell at once when I’m lying. “I see,” he said, “a bet. When Rhinelanders start betting.” It was hopeless. For an instant I considered taking a taxi and driving to Bohmte, waiting at the station for the train and seeing the boy get out. But of course he might get out at any little place before or after Bohmte. We were wet through and very cold when we got back to the hotel. I pushed Marie into the bar downstairs, stood at the counter, put my arm around her and ordered cognac. The bartender, who was also the hotel owner, looked at us as if he would like to call the police. The day before we had played parchesi for hours and had ordered ham sandwiches and tea sent up to us, that morning Marie had gone to the hospital, and come back looking pale. He put down the cognac in front of us so that half of it slopped over, and looked pointedly past us. “Don’t you believe me?” I asked Marie, “I mean about the boy.” “I do,” she said, “I do believe you.” She was only saying so out of pity, not because she really believed me, and I was furious because I didn’t have the nerve to tell the bartender off about the spilled cognac. Next to us stood a burly fellow who smacked his lips as he drank his beer. After each gulp he licked the foam from his lips, looked at me as if at any moment he was going to speak to me. I am afraid of being spoken to by half-drunk Germans of a certain age, they always talk about the war, think it was wonderful, and when they are quite drunk it turns out they are murderers and think it wasn’t really “all that bad.” Marie was shivering with cold, looked at me and shook her head when I pushed our cognac glasses across the stainless steel counter to the bartender. I was relieved because this time he pushed them toward us carefully, without spilling a drop. It removed the feeling I had had of being a coward. The chap next to us was noisily sipping a schnapps and began to talk to himself. “In forty-four,” he said, “we drank schnapps and cognac by the bucket—in forty-four by the bucket—we poured the rest onto the street and set fire to it—not a drop for the bastards.” He laughed. “Not a drop.” When I pushed our glasses across the counter toward the bartender again, he only filled one glass, looked at me doubtfully before filling the second, and it was only then that I realized Marie had left. I nodded, and he filled the second glass. I drained both, and I still feel relieved that I managed to leave then. Marie was lying upstairs on the bed in tears, when I put my hand on her forehead she pushed it away, quietly, gently, but she pushed it away. I sat down beside her, took her hand, and she did not pull it away. I was glad. Outside it was already getting dark, I sat beside her on the bed for an hour and held her hand before I began to speak. I spoke softly, told her the story of the boy again, and she pressed my hand, as if to say: Yes, I do believe you. I also asked her to tell me just what they had done to her at the hospital, she said it had been “something gynecological—nothing serious, but horrible.” The word gynecological scares me stiff. To me it sounds sinister, because I am completely ignorant in these things. I had been with Marie for three years when I first heard about the “gynecological” business. I knew, of course, how women have children, but I knew nothing about the details. I was twenty-four years old and lived with Marie for three years when I found out about it for the first time. Marie had laughed when she realized how ignorant I was. She drew my head to her breast and kept saying: “You’re sweet, you really are.” The second person to tell me about it was Karl Emonds, my school friend, who was always fussing over his horrible conception charts.